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Comment

All rips are dodgy UNLESS they are made with a codec you specifically have a license to use for encoding.

Sigh wrong, using legally purchased codecs you can.

Ripping your DVDs or your TV captures with x264 is technically illegal because no one has the right to distribute x264.

Again, use a legal h264 codec.

You cannot use ffmpeg or mplayer for the same reasons legally because legally they don't have the right to distribute any of the popular codec implementations, decoding or encoding.

This is why you use the hardware facilities on your legal card.

Yes, Fluendo offer decoders for popular codecs, but then, like CoreAVC, Fluendo should be responsible for making them run efficiently.

Not sure where you get this idea that all acceleration is done in the codec, yes it can be done but then again we would be talking about a software implementation and not support for a hardware implementation. FYI XvMC for example has been around for years and you have had it's use in a free legal way for eons, opensource to boot and supported in free drivers.

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And where can linux users purchase these wonderful encoding programs that give you rights to the most popular codecs? Please don't trot out Fluendo again, because they sell decoders.

Furthermore, are any of these encoders you claim we can get on linux legally open source? Because if they are not, why should it be a priority of an open source driver to support some closed source application when there are many other things that need to be done

This is why you use the hardware facilities on your legal card.

Ummm, we are talking about the availability of codecs for encoding. As far as I know, only NVIDIA via CUDA (not yet on linux?) offer hardware "accelerated" (it was slower for me) encoding. I'm sure there are encoder cards, but how many people are actually using these for encoding?

Not sure where you get this idea that all acceleration is done in the codec, yes it can be done but then again we would be talking about a software implementation and not support for a hardware implementation.

If you are selling a decoder, why wouldn't you make it as efficient as possible? It's definitely one of the reason's CoreAVC is so popular.

FYI XvMC for example has been around for years and you have had it's use in a free legal way for eons, opensource to boot and supported in free drivers.

Which opensource driver fully support and implement XvMC? It is probably the lowest hanging fruit and as far as I can tell, the Intel driver, which is pretty much vendor driven, is the only opensource driver that implements XvMC.

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And where can linux users purchase these wonderful encoding programs that give you rights to the most popular codecs? Please don't trot out Fluendo again, because they sell decoders.

Furthermore, are any of these encoders you claim we can get on linux legally open source? Because if they are not, why should it be a priority of an open source driver to support some closed source application when there are many other things that need to be done

Ummm, we are talking about the availability of codecs for encoding. As far as I know, only NVIDIA via CUDA (not yet on linux?) offer hardware "accelerated" (it was slower for me) encoding. I'm sure there are encoder cards, but how many people are actually using these for encoding?

A lot of people are capturing via hw solutions as listed above not to mentioning the capturing of the pure stream such as through IPTV (no I'm not talking about web tv) or satellite cards or hdtv cards that capture the pure stream. Such devices are in wide legal use in the huge htpc market. Legal solutions like this are even preferred in projects like mythtv.

If you are selling a decoder, why wouldn't you make it as efficient as possible? It's definitely one of the reason's CoreAVC is so popular.

CoreAVC also sells a GPU powered versions as well (via cuda) and STILL uses video acceleration frameworks Directshow for it's playback.

Which opensource driver fully support and implement XvMC? It is probably the lowest hanging fruit and as far as I can tell, the Intel driver, which is pretty much vendor driven, is the only opensource driver that implements XvMC.

Intel and VIA and now as well Gallium3D R300 driver, I guess all these guys are doing illegal stuff as well as the guys over at v4l.

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Which opensource driver fully support and implement XvMC? It is probably the lowest hanging fruit and as far as I can tell, the Intel driver, which is pretty much vendor driven, is the only opensource driver that implements XvMC.

Are you serious? You claim that there are legally available codecs available through many distributions, then as an example you trot out a $200 external device? And are we supposed to believe this is the common case, and as such Red Hat should prioritise MPEG4 hardware accell in open source drivers because pretty much all Linux users are using these $200 devices?

A lot of people are capturing via hw solutions as listed above not to mentioning the capturing of the pure stream such as through IPTV (no I'm not talking about web tv) or satellite cards or hdtv cards that capture the pure stream. Such devices are in wide legal use in the huge htpc market. Legal solutions like this are even preferred in projects like mythtv.

Yes and htpc is a niche and certinaly a niche that doesn't purchases a lot of RHEL licenses. Trying to pass off the HTPC community as "most linux users" is disingenous.

Moreover, most of these people who have modicum of common sense probably have an NVIDIA card and are hbappy running proprietary drivers with VDPAU.

CoreAVC also sells a GPU powered versions as well (via cuda) and STILL uses video acceleration frameworks Directshow for it's playback.

Yes and there is nothing stopping Fluendo from implementing VA-API or VDPAU support in their codecs or spend some development time improving OSS hardware accel if they feel there is such a huge demand they could profit from.

Intel ad VIA and now as well Gallium3D R300 driver, I guess all these guys are doing illegal stuff as well as the guys over at v4l.

Either you don't get it or you are being argumentative.

There is nothing illegal about implementing hardware accelleration for these codecs, but it makes absolutely no sense for a company like Red Hat to spend time doing it unless their customers really demand it, since Red Hat / Fedora don't even distribute the codecs in question for a variety of very valid and real legal reasons. The other reality is that most Linux users do NOT own specialised MPEG4 encoding hardware because good quality x264 encoding hardware ISN'T commodity. However, there is nothing preventing any member of the community stepping up and providing hardware accell if the community demands are so huge.

Your entire rant about Red Hat's stance and your ad hominem attacks on Dave were just plain ridiculous. Even more ridiculous than the way you've tried to wriggle away from your actual statements.

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According to a European Commission press release of 2002, "since the EPC came into force in 1978, at least 30,000 patents for computer-implemented inventions have already been issued [by the EPO]".

And have you? There's a lot more to it than one sentence in that site. As always, things are never as clear cut as they seem. At all effects, software patents are not applicable within the European Union. Yes, the European Patent Office continues to issue software patents, according to a somewhat twisted interpretation of the European Patent Convention (EPC)--you could say actually contravening it. On the other hand, these patents are not recognised in the respective national courts, with the effect that patent holders generally don't even try to make use of them to avoid their lost. There were attempts to modify the key article of the EPC regarding the exemption of software as a patentable invention, the last one in the shape of a European Directive that failed to reach its goals in 2005, thanks to the mobilisation of organisations such as the European Free Software Foundation and the Small and Medium Sized Enterprise unions amongst others.

Having said this, I have no doubts that more attempts will follow, and little faith I have in the overcomplex bureaucracy of the EU and its lack of transparency and democratic standards. Still, as of today, the situation in Europe is not by any stretch of the imagination that of the US. I don't know how things are in South America, Asia or Africa, but better check it out too before claiming that patent applicability and enforcement is anything near the norm--let alone universal. Not because you will be wrong in a stupid argument with a couple of dudes in a public forum such as Phoronix, but because you are helping to establish a status quo that doesn't even represent reality, effectively playing in the hands of the enemy (supposing that you oppose software patents, this is).

As for the mentioned illegal distribution of software that makes use of patented algorithms, there's also a lot more to it. Take the example of FFmpeg, which is perfectly legal to distribute. You are, in the first instance, bound by its license (mainly LGPL) to distribute it making sure you grant the same rights you received from its creators. That's fine, FFmpeg doesn't hold any patent license from the MPEG LA, so you obviously receive no such a license from that 3rd party when you obtain the software, and the end user getting it from you certainly doesn't either. This means that the end user, making use of the software, may, depending on the local jurisdiction, be liable for the use it makes of it. Meaning of course that if you are in the US you better check a) whether you are making money from the software; b) the current conditions under which you would be required to obtain a license from the MPEG LA (which depends on how much you are actually making). Debian, known to be particularly sensible to legal questions, does distribute FFmpeg with H264 decoding capabilities. The same goes for VLC, shipped in...the official repositories of most distributions I think. Why Debian doesn't include x264 encoders is puzzling, since I haven't found any reference indicating that the MPEG LA makes any distinction between encoding and decoding--actually I found comments about the opposite. Of course, in the case of commercial distributions, things get a bit hairy, since obviously they are making money above the thresholds set by the MPEG LA, and therefore they would probably have to ensure they are properly licensed for their operations in the US and other such countries with screwed-up laws--which again, don't represent the entire world.

The DVD playback issue is entirely different. It is not illegal because it makes use of US patented algorithms (MPEG-2), but because of their copyright protection scheme, as I think you mentioned. Sadly, most countries of the EU have already transposed the relevant directive, equivalent, if not apparently more restrictive, to the US DMCA. In any case, it's not like there are no legal means to offer DVD playback in Linux distributions--ask Ubuntu, a distribution targeted at desktop users, how it's done. In any case, RedHat being somewhat tied due to patents or copyright laws regarding DVD playback is not an excuse for anything.

Originally posted by yesterday

Either you don't get it or you are being argumentative.

There is nothing illegal about implementing hardware accelleration for these codecs, but it makes absolutely no sense for a company like Red Hat to spend time doing it unless their customers really demand it [...]

See, it's you the one being argumentative and derailing the discussion, whose terms were perfectly clear before you stepped in. Otherwise you explain me why you were apparently so concerned about legal issues when you perfectly knew there's nothing illegal about it. RedHat's customers not interested in video playback and therefore giving the company no reason for funding it, lack of developers in the OSS world (or perhaps lack of developers interested in it), different set of priorities and so on are all perfectly valid points, which at any rate have consequences in the choices users make in terms of hardware adquired and/or drivers used, but valid points all the same. Nothing of this has anything to do with the picture of Linux users somehow frantically engaged in wholesale piracy, "ripping shit left right and center", "too busy watching rips of 30 rock or something to bother", apparently to the point of distracting them from coding the features of the OSS drivers missing because the actual developers were not motivated enough in the first place.

Clearly, this is my honest interpretation upon reading several documents and discussions here and there. Nobody should take anything I wrote as valid, or as representing the views or anybody else than a random bloke in a forum.